ONE of East Timor's most bloody massacres is finally to be investigated
by a team of Australian forensic scientists who plan to excavate a mass
grave and identify up to 400 missing people.

TV footage of the slaughter of peaceful protesters by Indonesian troops
at the Santa Cruz cemetery in 1991 was smuggled into Australia and flashed
around a shocked world, providing the catalyst for the push towards
independence for the embattled population.

Now comes the last act in the drama: the hastily buried remains of the
dead will be exhumed and attempts made to identify them, in the hope of
bringing closure to the hundreds of families still searching for their
missing sons, husbands and fathers.

"More than anything, it's an humanitarian project," said the
team's leader, the forensic anthropologist Dr Soren Blau, a week before
her departure. "There are still a whole number of families who don't
know the fate of their missing ones. By investigating the alleged grave
site, and identifying any remains, we hope to be able to give closure to
those families, which will hopefully help to heal communities of people,
and the country as a whole."

Starting days after the bungled attacks on the country's President and
Prime Minister which threatens to tip the country back into chaos, the
project - funded by the Australian Government aid agency AusAID and with
the co-operation of the Timorese Government - is likely to be a delicate
one. But Dr Blau, 37, of the Centre for Human Identification at the
Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, with a forensic dentist, a
translator and two other forensic anthropologists from Argentina, says she
hopes it will be a unifying project for the nation.

"We've held a number of meetings with the families of the missing
and at each one, people got up in tears, still crying, 16 years on,"
Dr Blau said. "They said their sons walked out of home that day, and
were never seen again.

"They don't know what happened to them, and need to know. They
need to know if they died, and how. If we find their remains, at least
their families will be able to take them home, bury them and have a place
to grieve, and remember, and move on."

Estimates of the number of dead from that day on November 12, 1991,
vary from 200 to 400.

Soldiers opened fire on unarmed demonstrators in what was the first
public showing in Dili of support for the resistance movement against
Indonesian occupation, with banners depicting Xanana Gusmao, who later
became the first president and is now the Prime Minister.

The bodies, said to have been loaded on to military trucks, and injured
survivors taken from hospital, have never been found.

"The atrocity has huge significance for the Timorese in terms of
the move towards independence," Dr Blau said. "Now, with
eyewitnesses guiding us to the alleged mass grave, our primary aim is
humanitarian, but we will be collecting evidence and what the Government
does with that will be up to them."